29. THE EPILOGUE

So ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the
Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a
little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of
the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is
the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent
little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a
sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you
generously of all the things that happened to him after that time,
and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found
upon him.

"When they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, I'm
blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a blooming
treasure trove! Do I look like a Treasure Trove? And then a
gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the story at the Empire
Music 'All--just to tell 'em in my own words--barring one."

And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly,
you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript
books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain,
with asseverations that everybody thinks he has 'em! But bless you!
he hasn't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when
I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on with
the idea of my having 'em."

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively,
bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

He is a bachelor man--his tastes were ever bachelor, and there
are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons--it is
expected of him--but in his more vital privacies, in the matter
of braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his
house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements
are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for
wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his
knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.